May 20, 1969

OBITUARY

Coleman Hawkins, Tenor Saxophonist, Is Dead

By JOHN S. WILSON

Coleman Hawkins, the tenor saxophonist who, with such musicians as Louis Armstrong,
Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton, was one of the pioneer shapers of Jazz, died
yesterday at Wickersham Hospital. Mr. Hawkins, who suffered from a liver ailment, was 64
years old. He lived at 445 West 153d Street.

During Mr. Hawkins's career, which spanned almost half a century, he created the first valid
jazz style on the tenor saxophone, influenced countless saxophonists and was in the
vanguard of jazz development.

There were saxophonists in jazz bands before Mr. Hawkins began to develop his manner of
playing in the mid-1920's. But they were using a slap-tongue effect, which resulted in a
chickenlike sound, reflecting the prevalent feeling that the saxophone was essentially a
comic instrument. Mr. Hawkins, who had been using this technique himself, found and
developed resources in the saxophone while he was in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra at
Roseland Ballroom between 1924 and 1927.

He used a big tone and a heavy vibrato. His swaggering attack drove along relentlessly
through intensely rhythmic, choppy phrases.

Developing the Sound

"I always did play with a kind of stiff reed," he said in explaining the basis of his early style.
"When I started, I also used to play very loud because I was trying to play over seven or
eight other horns all the time. I used to work on those reeds all night to make them sound.
Having to play loud developed the fullness of my sound."

The power with which Mr. Hawkins played his saxophone was vividly recalled by Rex
Stewart, the cornetist, who once received an emergency call to fill in with the Henderson
band after two trumpet players were injured in an accident. One of those injured was the
first trumpet. En route to the job, Mr. Stewart wondered who had been called in to play the
first trumpet part.

"On arrival," Mr. Stewart said, "we set up and, much to my surprise, Coleman--on tenor--
took over the first-trumpet book and not only played the parts so well that we scarcely
missed the first trumpet but also carried the orchestra with volume such as I had never heard
coming out of a tenor sax."

Many of the saxophonists who were initially influenced by Mr. Hawkins during this period
never went beyond that influence. Mr. Hawkins, however, continued to develop.

In 1939 he made a recording of "Body and Soul" that still stands as a classic model of
welding grace and strength in a jazz ballad. And in the 1950's, he removed some of the
earlier heaviness from his tone and used silence as an element in his solos along with rough
ascending and descending runs.

Emergence of Emotion

"He got wilder and wilder," wrote Whitney Balliett in The New Yorker, "like an aging
conservative who dons sneakers and a sports jacket for lunch at the Plaza. For the first time,
the emotion beneath the surface of his solos became steadily visible and once in a while it
backed up and burst through."

In recent years, Mr. Hawkins grew a long, gray patriarchal beard. Shuffling out on the stage
in a grandfatherly manner, he gave the impression that he could scarcely hold up his
saxophone. The first few tentative sounds he blew seemed to confirm that. Then, as his solo
began to develop, he appeared to grow in stature as the notes he produced gained in
authority and his performance took on the power and individuality that had always
characterized his work.

"The older he gets, the better he gets," said Johnny Hodges, the alto saxophonist in Duke
Ellington's Orchestra. "If you ever think he's through, you find he's just gone right on ahead
again."

Mr. Hawkins was born in St. Joseph, Mo., on Nov. 21, 1904. His mother, an organist,
started teaching him piano when he was 5. At 7, he was studying cello and when he was 9
he got a saxophone. He studied harmony, counterpoint and composition at Washburn
College in Topeka, Kan., and at 17, he joined Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds, a group that
accompanied Miss Smith, a vaudeville singer, at the 12th Street Theater in Kansas City.

Garvin Bushell, a clarinetist in that band, had a vivid initial impression of Mr. Hawkins. "He
was ahead of everything I'd ever heard on the instrument," said Mr. Bushell, adding:

"He read everything. And he didn't--as was the custom then--play the saxophone like a
trumpet or a clarinet. He was running changes because he'd studied the piano as a
youngster."

Mr. Hawkins reached New York with the Jazz Hounds in 1922 and made his first recording
then with Miss Smith. Fletcher Henderson heard him playing at jam sessions, used him on
several recordings accompanying blues singers and added him to the band that he took into
the Club Alabam in 1923. Mr. Hawkins remained with the Henderson band for 11 years,
playing most of the time at the Roseland Ballroom. He worked constantly on his style and
technique.

Copied Honky Tonks' Style

"Maybe the rest of the fellows would be out looking for kicks or something," he said, "and
I'd be in the honky-tonk joints, listening to the musicians, and I'd hear things I'd like and
they'd penetrate and I'd keep them. If I hear something I like, I don't go home and get out my
horn and try to play it. I just incorporate it within the things I play already, in my own style."

In 1934, learning that his fame had spread to Europe, Mr. Hawkins impulsively sent a
cablegram to Jack Hylton, a bandleader who was the English equivalent of Paul Whiteman.
The full message was "I am interested in coming to London."

Mr. Hylton responded the next day and within a week Mr. Hawkins was on the Ile de
France. The saxophonist toured in England, France and the Netherlands, and when the threat
of World War II developed in 1939, he with several other American jazz musicians,
returned to the United States.

While he had been overseas, Lester Young's style of playing tenor saxophone--lighter in
tone than Mr. Hawkins's and more concerned with linear improvisations--had caught the
fancy of young jazz musicians who now considered Mr. Hawkins's style as dated. However,
Mr. Hawkins quickly reasserted his dominance with his recording of "Body and Soul."

"I never thought of 'Body and Soul' seriously as being anything big for me," Mr. Hawkins
said years after making the recording.

"I'd used it occasionally as an encore, something to get off the stage with. And at Kelly's
Stable"--a jazz club on 51st Street where Mr. Hawkins was leading a combo after his return
from Europe--"sometimes at night, after a couple of quarts of scotch, very late, I'd sit down
and kill time and play about 10 choruses on it, and then the boys would come in and play
harmony notes in the background while I finished it up. That's all there was to it."

Mr. Hawkins recorded the tune only as a favor to Leonard Joy, who produced his recording
sessions. It became such a hit that he had to play it at almost every appearance for the next
15 years.

Although most jazz musicians of Mr. Hawkins's generation resisted the harmonic and
rhythmic approaches that developed in jazz in the 1940's and that became known as bebop,
Mr. Hawkins welcomed them. In 1944 he made what is considered to be first bop record
"Woody 'n' You," with a group that included Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and Oscar
Pettiford.

For the last 25 years, Mr. Hawkins performed most of the time as a single, playing with
whatever rhythm section was available for accompaniment.

Writing in Downbeat magazine in 1950, Michael Levin summed up Mr. Hawkins's past as
of that date and accurately projected his future.

Keeping Up With the Times

"Despite all of the amazing elements of his personal style," Mr. Levin wrote, "the most
fascinating thing about Hawkins as a musician is the way he has changed with the times,
moved with music, and never allowed himself to become dated.

"In the final analysis, this can only be charged off to his completely cold and observant mind
when it comes to music, his ability to remain disentangled from emotional arguments about
styles and modes of playing, and his genuine interest in constantly making himself a better
musician."

Mr. Hawkins is survived by his widow, Dolores; a son, Rene, and two daughters, Colette
and Mrs. Melvin Wright.

A funeral service will be held on Friday at 2 P.M. at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Lexington
Avenue and 54th Street.